*Minions do not take an Int penalty to these skills, though they do apply any Int bonus.

A small yellow humanoid suddenly crosses your path. As you stop to wonder what it was, many more of them pass by

The creation of someone who wants a lot of cheap, disposable, comic relief workers could do a lot worse than Minions. They could do better, but there are definitely worse. Minions speak their own language (see Minion Speak) and can understand any language, even if they can't speak it.

A Minion is about 2 - 2½ feet tall and weighs about 40 pounds.

Combat:

Minion Speak (Ex): Minions are unable to speak any language but their own, which sounds like unintelligible babble, spruced with words from other languages. Minions are always able to understand each other. However, no other creature, even those with a tongues spell, or the Monk's Tongue of the Sun and Moon ability, can understand this babble. If a creature can see the minion, the minion's exaggerated body language gives the listener an 85% chance to understand the minion.

Minion Immunity (Su): In order to perpetuate humorous shenanigans between minions, they have been created with the strange ability to be unable to cause actual physical harm to one another, either directly or indirectly.

While they can punch each other, stab each other, fire rockets at each other, etc., the receiving minion(s) feels the effect but is never caused hit point loss, ability score damage/drain, and non-lethal damage. For example, a minion could throw a dagger in the back of another minion, and all that would happen is the other minion would yell in pain and then frantically attempt to remove the dagger. Children also trigger this ability in minions.

Against any creature other than a child or another minion, minions only take half damage as lethal damage, the other half is taken as non-lethal damage. Once a minion's non-lethal damage reaches or exceeds his full hit point total, all damage is lethal. Minions take full non-lethal damage.

Minions are only Sickened by poisons for 1d4 minutes and cannot be permanently polymorphed or petrified, such effects lasting no more than 1d4 hours.

Minion Chain (Ex): Minions are able to create very long chains of themselves to grab onto objects or people that are falling to their deaths. Up to 20 Minions can "chain" together in any one round. However, 20 additional minions are able to join the chain every following round, ad infinitum. The Minions are considered helpless while chained.

Because of the Minions' height, a chain of 10 minions is sufficient to catch a falling creature/object that fell in the same round. 20 Minions can catch a creatre/object that has been falling for two rounds, and so on.

This chain counts as an uncapped Aid Another bonus to the first minion in the chain, granting a +1 Circumstance bonus to Strength per Minion, however, the other Minions in the chain do not need to make checks to pull the grabbed person/object to safety.

Slightly More Alive (Ex): Unlike other Living Constructs, minions feel pain, need to sleep, and can become fatigued (but not exhausted). They can heal naturally.

Creating a Minion

Minions are created in sets of 10.

To a set of Minions, you need 100GP's worth of materials, the Craft Construct feat and 50XP.

Creating the Minions takes a day per Minion (10 for one set). Each Minion is created as a 1st level Expert, with the stats shown above. Minions "level" like any humanoid.

So there you have it folks, hopefully I portrayed the Minions as they were in the film.

Tanuki Tales

2012-11-20, 11:52 AM

I could have sworn the Minions were just flat immune to damage period, but I'll need to go rewatch Despicable Me.

Great homebrew idea regardless. :smallbiggrin:

Sgt. Cookie

2012-11-20, 12:04 PM

I flirted with that idea, but it would make them absolute monsters for any PC to face.

Ilorin Lorati

2012-11-20, 01:16 PM

I flirted with that idea, but it would make them absolute monsters for any PC to face.

An alternative would be to automatically convert any incoming non-minion based damage into nonlethal. The PCs can still take care of them, but you don't lose the flavor of the minions being hardly little buggers.

Sgt. Cookie

2012-11-21, 08:09 AM

Hmm. What if only half the damage was converted to non-lethal? They'd be tough to kill, but not too tough that low level parties would dread them.

Added in how you craft a Minion.

Debihuman

2012-11-21, 04:04 PM

I like these a lot. I hope you don't mind some suggestions and proofreading.

It seems to me that minions should have a higher Int with a lower Wis (Int 8 and Wis 6 would be appropriate). They are overly inquisitive (lacking the wisdom to have have good judgment) but are capable of doing things (just have no concept of consequences and lack self control).

Right now they have far too many skill points and they need racial bonuses to their skills to give them the numbers you want. They should have a +6 racial bonus to Knowledge (Architecture and Engineering) and +4 racial bonus to Craft (Any).

See spoiler for boring skill issues.

Skills: 4x (2+ Int modifier [minimum 1]) Int. 6 is -2 so they only have 4 skill points. Both Craft and Knowledge skills are Int based. Putting 2 ranks in Knowledge and 2 in craft gives you the following:

In order to give you what you want, I recommend they have racial skill. Racial skills are noted in their own section too. By giving them a +6 racial bonus to Knowledge (Architecture and Engineering) and a +4 racial bonus to Craft (Any) you get:

Critical damage x2 is never noted in the stat block since that is standard critical damage.

Minion Immunity should be a Supernatural ability but all the other special abilities should be Extraordinary. Usually there is a game mechanic that goes with special abilities.

I think that minions should only be Sickened by any poison for 1d4 minutes and that they should not be permanently affected by polymorph or petrification. See Minion Immunity.

The following belongs in the creature's description: Minions speak their own language (see Minion Speak) and can understand Common, even if they can't speak it.

Minion Speak (Ex): Minions are unable to speak any language but their own, which sounds like unintelligible babble, spruced with words from other languages. Minions are always able to understand each other. However, no other creature, even those with a tongues spell, or the Monk's Tongue of the Sun and Moon ability, can understand this babble. If a creature can see the minion, the minion's exaggerated body language gives the listener an 85% chance to understand the minion.

Minion Immunity (Su): In order to perpetuate humorous shenanigans between minions, they have been created with the strange ability to be unable to cause actual physical harm to one another, either directly or indirectly.

While they can punch each other, stab each other, fire rockets at each other, etc., the receiving minion(s) feels the effect but is never caused hit point loss, ability score damage/drain, and non-lethal damage. For example, a minion could throw a dagger in the back of another minion, and all that would happen is the other minion would yell in pain and then frantically attempt to remove the dagger. Children also trigger this ability in minions.

Against any creature other than a child or another minion, minions only take half damage as lethal damage, the other half is taken as non-lethal damage. Once a minion's non-lethal damage reaches or exceeds his full hit point total, all damage is lethal. Minions take full non-lethal damage.

Minions are only Sickened by poisons for 1d4 minutes and cannot be permanently polymorphed or petrified, such effects lasting no more than 1d4 hours.

Minion Chain (Ex): Minions are able to create very long chains of themselves to grab onto objects or people that are falling to their deaths. Up to 20 Minions can "chain" together in any one round. However, 20 additional minions are able to join the chain every following round, ad infinitum.

This chain counts as an uncapped Aid Another bonus to the first minion in the chain, granting a +1 Circumstance bonus to Strength per Minion.

Slightly More Alive (Ex): Unlike other Living Constructs, minions feel pain, need to sleep, and can become fatigued (but not exhausted). They can heal naturally.

Debby

CarpeGuitarrem

2012-11-21, 04:45 PM

But but but but I don't wanna kill them!

Debihuman

2012-11-21, 06:41 PM

You could change this:
Against any creature other than a child or another minion, minions only take half damage as lethal damage, the other half is taken as non-lethal damage. Once a minion's non-lethal damage reaches or exceeds his full hit point total, all damage is lethal. Minions take full non-lethal damage. to the following:

Against any creature other than a child or another minion, minions take all lethal damage as non-lethal damage. Once a minion's non-lethal damage reaches or exceed his full hit point total, the minion falls unconscious and any further damage is taken as lethal damage.

Does that help?

Debby

Zelkon

2012-11-23, 06:01 PM

This is awesome, deserves a bump, and needs to be made into a PC race. NOW.

Sgt. Cookie

2012-11-23, 08:47 PM

Sorry, yes. I've been making a character for a PBP. I'll sort out the details later.

@Debby: That looks great, thanks.

The skills thing is a good point, though I must point out that Experts gain 4 skill points per level.

The abilities are purposefully untyped, meaning they default to Natural Abilities. The reason for this is to prevent spells from getting rid of them.

@Zelkon: We could just give these guys an LA, what would be apropriate?

Zelkon

2012-11-23, 08:51 PM

Sorry, yes. I've been making a character for a PBP. I'll sort out the details later.

@Debby: That looks great, thanks.

The skills thing is a good point, though I must point out that Experts gain 4 skill points per level.

The abilities are purposefully untyped, meaning they default to Natural Abilities. The reason for this is to prevent spells from getting rid of them.

@Zelkon: We could just give these guys an LA, what would be apropriate?

LA is fine.

Debihuman

2012-11-24, 06:03 AM

Those are not "natural" abilities; natural abilities are ones that anyone could have such as a weapons proficiency, natural attack, ability to read (or Barbarian's illiteracy). They are caused by the physical nature of the creature. Everything else needs to be designated. For example, a bat's echolocation is Blindsense and is Extraordinary. See MM or online SRD. Even a creature's ability to hold its breath is Extraordinary (crocodile).

Features that are specific to your creature that defy normal abilities (such as minion speak not being understood by a tongues spell) definitely fall under Extraordinary. Immunity to damage is definitely Extraordinary as is the Chain ability.

Actually Experts get 6+Int modifier x4 skills at first level. With Int 6, modifier is -2. This gives them 16 skill points to use. They can have a maximum of 4 ranks in any skill (HD +3). They should have 4 skills all with 4 ranks. Then you add ability modifiers and the bonus from the Skill Focus feat and any racial modifiers (+4 to craft and +6 to knowledge seems most appropriate). Since they need more skills, I recommend adding a second Craft skill and Disguise (to appear Human only) to reflect what they did in the movie.

Skills: Minions have a +6 racial bonus to Knowledge (A&E) and a +4 racial bonus to Craft skills.

Hope this helps.

Debby

maxriderules

2012-11-24, 11:21 AM

On the other hand, since the minion (or child) under minion immunity still feels the pain, wouldn't some PCs take the oppurtunity to torture enemy minions for information? Also, What happens if two different people with minions attack each other using their minion hoardes? would there just be a constant war until something else happened to kill of one or both armies?
To be honest, these minions have the potential to be really dark.

Debihuman

2012-11-24, 01:04 PM

On the other hand, since the minion (or child) under minion immunity still feels the pain, wouldn't some PCs take the oppurtunity to torture enemy minions for information? Also, What happens if two different people with minions attack each other using their minion hoardes? would there just be a constant war until something else happened to kill of one or both armies?
To be honest, these minions have the potential to be really dark.

If you can't understand what the minion is saying, what good is torturing one of them? Also, they are pretty stupid and probably don't have any information worth your time torturing them.

Besides, PCs are supposed to be the good guys. If the PCs tell the minions that their leader is a bad guy, they'd probably just rat him/her out with each one of them of them babbling all at once ready to tell its personal story. That would be hilarious. They can look pretty pathetic when they think they've been wronged.

The two armies of minions would run out to each and then just greet each other like long lost relatives. Why would they fight?

The whole point of these is to play them for laughs.

Debby

Sgt. Cookie

2012-11-25, 11:14 AM

I've made some updates to the Minions, how do they look?

Debihuman

2012-11-25, 03:22 PM

Much better. :smile:

To nitpick though, you should correct the skills section since you changed the Int to 8. I had based off Int 6 (Just add +1 to Int based skills and you should be fine). The Skills section noting racial modifiers belongs in its own section not in the stat block. And you should probably bold minion chain properly.